Taifook to focus on China institutional business

Takes advantage of projected value of equities and futures traded $455bln per day in 2020.

Taifook Securities Group Ltd., one of Hong Kong’s biggest brokerages for individual investors, plans to focus on its institutional business, betting that its acquisition by China’s largest brokerage by assets will allow it to tap the nation’s growing securities market.

The Hong Kong-based firm will be able to target institutional clients of Shanghai-based Haitong Securities Co., which bought Taifook in 2009, said Peter Wong, Taifook’s deputy chairman and chief executive. With the prospect of Haitong obtaining a quota under the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors program, allowing it to buy overseas equities from inside China, Taifook may be able to offer investment advisory, as well as asset management, services to its parent.

“China’s fund is massive, and that means enormous opportunities,” Wong said in an interview in Hong Kong yesterday. “Merging with Haitong means the absolute number, in terms of our client network, grows bigger. It also helps boost our strength and supplies us with additional capital.”

View the full story in Bloomberg.